The Havoc Machine Page 9

  “Do you think Mr. Griffin might loan us some spiders?” Thad said dryly.

  “Applesauce,” said Dante from the ground.

  “Can I ride him?” Nikolai asked.

  “We should hitch up the wagon,” Sofiya said.

  Chapter Six

  Saint Petersburg wasn’t even eight hundred kilometers away. If nothing went wrong, the circus train could travel all night and arrive there by late morning the following day. Mr. Griffin would arrive at his destination in plenty of time.

  Thad leaned back against the cracked red leather seat in the last row of the passenger car. Ahead of him, the circus performers occupied most of the other seats, sleeping or conversing or sewing costumes or playing small games with the children. Thad, for his part, always sat in the back so no one would feel obliged to talk to him. He stared fixedly out the window at Russian countryside. Trees were shedding their leaves and the fields were stubbly, stripped of every grain of wheat and rye, every head of cabbage, every single potato. Soon it would be time to slaughter the animals, but for now there was a lull between the two harvests. Normally, it would be the perfect time for a circus to play, but this was also tax time, and taxes had gone up yet again, creating the economic hardship that made the peasants unhappy. At the knife shop, Thad had always been aware of difficult times—people bought fewer new blades and were more likely to ask for older ones to be sharpened. When things got really bad, they didn’t come to the shop at all. Circuses were even more at the mercy of hardship. People always needed knives, but they could live without sword swallowers. Now that winter was coming, the circus should be heading south to a warmer, wealthier country like Italy or France. They shouldn’t be moving into the teeth of winter, towing a monster behind them. It made Thad tense and restless, despite his fatigue.

  A small head leaned against his arm. Thad’s jaw went tight. Nikolai refused to budge from Thad’s side, and Thad had no method of keeping him away, short of physical force, and even though he knew full well Nikolai was just a machine, he couldn’t bring himself to use force, not against something that looked and talked like a little boy.

  And now the machine in question was snuggling against him, simulating mechanical affection for him. What demented mind had created such a thing?

  “You look very sweet,” Sofiya said. Her seat faced him, part of a set of four. The fourth seat was empty. Across the aisle was a stack of travel bags and boxes instead of more seats, so no one sat next to them. “Very comfortable. If you are cold, I could probably find a blanket or a shawl to—”

  “I’m fine,” Thad interrupted. Since they were at the very rear of the passenger car, the clacking of the wheels was louder back here, and even Tina McGee, who trained poodles and sat in front of Thad, couldn’t overhear. They actually had a measure of privacy.

  “I was not speaking to you, Thad,” Sofiya said.

  Nikolai yawned. “I’m not cold.”

  Now Thad yawned, and hated himself for it. How could watching a machine yawn make him want to yawn? But he’d been up all night and then had a very trying day afterward. This was the first time he’d stopped moving since. The rocking motion of the train served to make things worse, and his eyelids were drooping.

  “Aren’t you tired?” he asked Sofiya.

  “Of course. But I am also hungry. I did not get a chance to eat at the hotel like you.”

  As if on cue, Mama Berloni, a large, round woman in a patchwork dress and a white head cloth, appeared in the aisle with a large basket. Her pink face was unlined, and her arms were as big around as melons. She and her husband had long ago discovered that those who supplied food to the crowds made more money than those entertained them.

  “I find you at last,” she said in her bouncy Italian English. “You eat. Sword swallower needs the big belly, like my husband. You all eat now.”

  “Pretty lady, pretty lady,” said Dante from his perch atop Thad’s seat.

  “Nothing for you,” Mama Berloni tutted at the parrot. “You just pretend to eat and make the big mess.”

  She handed out ham sandwiches wrapped in paper, boiled eggs, and slices of apple pie. Nikolai took an egg, but only held it. Sofiya thanked her and introduced herself.

  “You call me Mama,” Mama Berloni replied. “You get hungry and have no food, you come see me at the grease wagon. No charge for circus. But you do a favor for me later if I need, yes? You do for me, I do for you. That is how circus people stay together. Like family. Like you three now. Glad to see Thad has found a good girl. And this is a very sweet little boy. You’re a very nice family. Everyone needs a family.”

  “We’re not—” Thad began.

  “Now I go see Tortellis,” Mama interrupted. “Without me they eat nothing. Nothing!” And she bustled away.

  “Bless my soul!” Dante whistled.

  “See?” Nikolai said. “We’re a family. We have a son and a mama and a—”

  “I’m not your papa,” Thad said firmly. He unwrapped the generous ham sandwich and took a salty bite. “Stop saying I am.”

  “It’s the papa’s job to correct the son.” Nikolai set the egg down and swung his legs against the seat. “So when you tell me to stop saying you’re my papa, you are doing a good job of being a papa.”

  Sofiya coughed around her apple pie.

  “Now,” Nikolai continued, “you need to tell me a story.”

  “What?” Thad was still trying to untangle Nikolai’s first comment. “Why?”

  “So I will fall asleep. Or you can sing me a song.”

  “I don’t know any songs,” Thad replied shortly. “And I don’t sing.”

  “Your mama and papa sang to you when were little. That’s what mamas and papas do.”

  “Well?” prompted Sofiya. “Didn’t they?”

  “No. Yes. Sometimes.” He tried to get his foggy mind to work, and failed. “Look, I’m tired, and—”

  “Why are you keeping this boy with you?” Sofiya brushed bread crumbs off her cloak. “You claim you dislike automatons made by clockworkers. You claim he means nothing to you. Why not set him aside, then? Walk away.”

  “He’s my papa,” Nikolai said firmly. “Papas don’t do that.”

  “I’m not going to leave an automaton to wander about. Who knows what trouble that might cause?” Thad finished his food and leaned against the window, arms folded and eyes shut. “Once we arrive in Saint Petersburg, I’ll find a place for him.”

  As he drifted off to sleep, he heard Nikolai say, “Papas also keep their sons out of trouble.”

  “They try,” agreed Sofiya, “but they rarely succeed.”

  * * *

  Thad jerked awake. A line of warm drool ran down his chin, and he wiped it away. Blearily, he looked about. Sofiya still sat across from him. Next to her, Nikolai paged through a thick book. Outside the train it was daylight, but heavy and cloudy, so dark it was almost night. The train wasn’t moving.

  “Why have we stopped?” Thad demanded. “What’s going on?”

  “You know as much as I do,” Sofiya replied. Her scarlet cloak poured over the seat around her.

  “You snore,” said Nikolai. He pointed at something on the page and asked Sofiya in Russian, “What’s that?”

  “A cuckoo,” Sofiya told him.

  “And that?”

  “A cowbird. They both lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. The false babies trick the parents into raising them as their own.”

  The other performers in the car were standing up and talking restlessly. Thad pried open the window and stuck his head outside. Cold, damp air burst over him. Ahead of the steaming engine, a large bonfire blocked the tracks. A crowd of men stood around it, and they shook their fists and shouted. Thad tensed and pulled his head back inside.

  “Peasant uprising,” he said.

  “Dangerous?” Sofiya asked.

  “You know as much as I do.”

  “Danger,” echoed Dante. “Death, doom, despair.”

  “Your bird is so cheer
ful,” Sofiya said.

  Dodd pulled open the door at the front of the car. He wore an everyday jacket, but he had snatched up his scarlet top hat and cane. Behind him came a tall, lean man in an Aran fisherman’s sweater and cap. He had deep red hair and carried a bag of juggling equipment. This was Nathan Storm, the manager who had recently returned to clowning.

  “Piotr!” Dodd said. “I need you outside with me. Tortellis, you too! Where’s the Great Mordovo?”

  “What is it? Please explain, Ringmaster,” Mama Berloni called out from her seat.

  “Poor peasants. Desperate. They think we’re carrying tax goods and money to the landowner, and they want it back.” Murmurs rushed up and down the aisle. Dodd put up his hands. “Keep calm. We’re going to put on a little show out there, just for them, and prove we’re just a circus. Nathan, you and Hank begin with that team juggling act and the Tortellis will follow with some acrobatics. While they’re doing that, Mordovo, you fetch some of your magic equipment from the boxcars. Everyone else wait here. Move quickly, please! Everyone loves a circus, but not when they have to wait for one.”

  In moments, Dodd and the performers he had named were gone. Everyone else remained in their seats in a cloud of tension.

  “Is it all right?” Nikolai asked in a small voice.

  Thad stuck his head outside again. Already Nathan and Benny, another clown Thad barely knew, were juggling clubs and flipping them back and forth at each other. Dodd stood to one side, his ringmaster’s grin on his face. Piotr hulked near him, either to translate for him or guard him, Thad wasn’t sure which. The enormous crowd of Russian men, easily three times the number of performers and roustabouts aboard the train, stood near the engine and watched. They carried pitchforks and scythes, and Thad hadn’t noticed until that moment how dangerous such implements looked, especially in the hands of hard-muscled men who knew how to use them. Thad glanced in the other direction. Far down the way, past the brightly colored circus cars, lay the two drab boxcars of Mr. Griffin. Thad thought fast, then pulled his head back in.

  “Everything will be fine,” he told Nikolai. “You stay here with your—with Sofiya.”

  “Applesauce,” said Dante from his perch above the seat.

  “And where are you going?” Sofiya asked sharply.

  “To get some air.” He nipped out the passenger car’s rear door before she could respond further, leaving Dante behind as well.

  With all eyes on the performance near the engine, Thad was able to jump unnoticed to the ground on the other side of the tracks. He trotted down beside the line of cars in the dim light. The setting sun and dark clouds dimmed the light considerably, giving him cover. He passed the animal cars, pungent with exotic manure and loud with restless roars and shrieks. No spiders were in view.

  He reached the first drab car. The sliding cargo door lay on the other side, and Thad knew better than to bother with it—noisy to open, very noticeable. Instead, he skinned up the ladder bolted to the metal siding. Just under the eaves of the car was a vent with crisscross bars. Cautiously, Thad pressed an ear to the chilly metal beneath it. Nothing. He slowly brought his head high enough to peer through the bars. Blackness lay beyond. He inhaled through his nose and got smells of wood and engine oil and metal shavings and paper, all smells he associated with a clockworker’s work space. If there was a man in there, however, he was remarkably quiet and willing to sit in complete darkness.

  Thad climbed down and slipped along to the second car. What kind of clockworker was Mr. Griffin? Why did he need Thad and Sofiya? Thad also remembered quite clearly the way Mr. Griffin had asked about Nikolai. In Thad’s experience, clockworkers never did anything by accident. What appeared to everyone as insanity was actually extreme intelligence. Everything they said and did would make perfect sense to anyone who could understand it. Unfortunately for the people around them, clockworkers were able to convince themselves that nothing mattered but their own goals and research, which was why they treated other humans with such casual cruelty and disdain. To a clockworker, all life was absolutely equal—a rat, a stalk of wheat, a tree, and a little boy were all the same. Thad had heard of some religious philosophies that taught compassion to all life based on this idea, but clockworkers ran the other way—all life was equally useful for experimentation.

  Mr. Griffin didn’t care in the slightest about Thad or Sofiya or Nikolai themselves. He only cared about gaining knowledge or completing his experiments or finishing his grand plan. Mr. Griffin’s plan or experiment must be enormously important to him if it meant keeping Thad around—Griffin had to know Thad was working out a way to kill him. If Thad could figure out what Griffin’s plan was, he would have a leg up in ending the creature’s life.

  If only he had access to some explosives. A stick of dynamite beneath the boxcars would end Mr. Griffin’s career rather quickly. But this wasn’t America, where dynamite was easy to come by. Thad ran his tongue round the inside of one cheek. He was caught in a race. The moment Mr. Griffin finished whatever he was working on, Thad would no longer be important, and Mr. Griffin would no doubt kill him as a threat. And who knew what he might do to Sofiya and Nikolai?

  He shook his head and climbed the ladder to the second car. What happened to Nikolai didn’t matter. Automatons didn’t matter. Machines didn’t matter.

  So why did it seem like he could still feel Nikolai’s little head pressed into the side of his arm?

  Because he reminds you of David, he told himself firmly. His memory wheels make him act that way in order to ensure his continued existence. If you like him and view him as a little boy instead of as a mere machine, you won’t destroy him. He acts like a little sweetie so you won’t kill him.

  Another treacherous voice whispered, Isn’t that what all children do?

  Faint cheers and applause came down the track. Apparently the little performance was having a positive effect. Thad pulled himself up to the vent of the second car and listened a second time. This time he heard a soft chugging sound and the burble of liquid. No voices, however. He peered through the vent. The interior of this boxcar was lit, but all Thad could make out through the bars were some odd shapes of metal and glass. The glass especially drew his eye. It curved like an enormous wine-glass turned upside down, but Thad could only see a tiny part of it. What the hell was Griffin doing? And where was the man himself? What man would subject himself to traveling in a boxcar through dangerous territory? That didn’t seem likely even for a clockworker. Maybe all this was just his equipment, and Griffin was coming to Saint Petersburg another way, by ocean steamer or airship. The more Thad thought about it, the more sense it made. Mr. Griffin wasn’t on the train at all.

  Still cautious, however, he crept up to the roof. The curved top was clear but for the bump of the covered vent in the middle. His heart beat at the back of his throat from both nervousness and, he had to admit, excitement. He was a hound on the chase, a hunter on the scent. He had the power to stop a monster before he hurt more people, people like David or Ekaterina or Olga. It wasn’t a life he had chosen, but now that he was doing it, he did find a certain grim satisfaction in doing it right.

  Thad slid quietly across the boxcar roof to the covered vent. A heavy padlock secured the lid. Of course. At least he didn’t see any alarms or nasty little traps. He produced his lock picks and set to work. The lock was tricky, but so was Thad, and just as his hands began to get cold, it popped open. Another cheer went up from the front of the train.

  Despite the the fact that Thad was sure Mr. Griffin himself was not on the train, he was still careful to slide the lock free without banging it about or making other noise. From another pocket he took a tiny tin flask of machine oil, which he applied to the lid’s hinges so they wouldn’t squeak. Cold dread and feverish anticipation shoved at him, made him want to hurry, hurry, hurry. The performance would end any moment and the train would start up. A guard or sentry machine he had overlooked might take notice. The cold autumn air bit through his clothing. Every
fiber in him told him to finish this and run. But he made himself continue with slow, aching caution. He lifted the vent lid just a crack, enough so he could crouch over it and peer inside. A puff of warm, humid air escaped, bringing with it a strange, sweet smell that was also chemical.

  The dim light and narrow crack made it hard to see much. A maze of copper pipes ran in all directions. Something went bloop. Liquid gushed. Machinery whirred and clattered. Claws skritched in the shadows, and Thad realized that spiders crawled everywhere. They swarmed the floor. They crawled along the pipes. They clung to the walls. Many of them carried small objects or tools that Thad couldn’t identify. In the center of the boxcar stood a glass dome with pipes and wires connected to it. Thad couldn’t get a good look from this vantage point. He widened the crack a hair to see better.

  A cold hand grabbed his wrist. Thad dropped the lid and twisted like a cat, a knife already in his hand. Sofiya stood behind him on the roof. Her scarlet cloak fluttered in the wind. His heart pounded hard enough to break his ribs. God—how had she crept up without him noticing?

  “What are you doing?” she whispered harshly. “Leave! Now!”

  He tried to pull his arm free, but her grip was surprisingly strong. “I’m trying to find out more about—”

  “Now!” Her face was pale with terror. “He has eyes everywhere!”

  Her fear was infectious. Thad’s earlier excitement drained away, leaving him felt nervous and cold. Sofiya yanked him away from the vent back to the ladder.

  “The vent’s not locked. He might notice.”

  Sofiya swore but released him. Thad crept back to the vent and slid the padlock back into the hasp. It made a quiet scraping sound. The click when it locked made him wince.

  A loud whistle burst from the engine, and Thad jumped. The peasants must have decided to let the train go through and removed the bonfire. Everyone had climbed back on board and the train was getting ready to move. Thad turned to head back to Sofiya at the ladder.